I have worked faithfully this week to complete all of the tasks assigned to me. We have had setbacks with my husband's illness and surgery, my employment has been blessed with new projects and expansion, I made it through the enormous homework load, I am completing a legal paper to be filed this week, carpets commercially cleaned in our home, new lighting and furniture, and a vacation planned and paid for. I am grateful for weekends to play with my ponies, puppies, and read! I am grateful for my small group of women with whom I receive love, encouragement, and love.
I have learned the psychology of a type of women. The type of women who use their insecurities to knock other people down via social networking, who think short shorts have a fundamental bearing on one’s personality, who think their views are mutually exclusive, who believe in false dichotomy that women can either be intelligent and interesting, or pretty and vapid. They are girls who missed the memo that inferring stupidity, vanity and shallowness on others does not make one smart, interesting or deep, and that you don’t need to degrade other women to validate yourself. I am sure living in clutter and chaos attribute to such behavior. After all, receiving disability for mental illness and not being able to completely take care of oneself must be exhausting.
The reality is that women don’t have to de-value other women to find value within themselves. Instead, women should seek to defog the mirror in which they see themselves and other women. Once you are able to see the value in your life, it’s hard to look at someone else and see them and invaluable. It’s okay if a woman is prettier, smarter, taller, fitter or whatever else than you; imagined or not. When we focus on our own light, our own uniqueness and fulfilling our own paths in life, it will become easier to see that our value is not tied to a man’s approval and that “other” woman owns their autonomy and their sexual choices have nothing to do with you. The reality is that our negative response to other women is a projection of how we feel about ourselves. “It’s a fun-house mirror that reflects an inaccurate version of who we are, but we turn on her anyway, because it’s easier,” writes Emily V. Gordon for the New York Times. "We are not seeing the other woman for who she is; and who she is just may be bad ass. Instead, we see who we are not or who we think we are not. It’s easier to tear down another woman than to address what’s really going on inside ourselves. “We don’t need to lower the stock of other women, either for the future of the species or for our own psyches,” Gordon argues. “When we each focus on being the dominant force in our own universe, rather than invading other universes, we all win.” I think Emily is right. When we are fully able to see that we each are unique beings, then we can understand why we don’t have to prove how worthy we are by putting other women down. If you want to better yourself, it does not take tearing another woman down to do so. You are your own competition, so start there. We are worthy just as we are, and it’s time we all started to believe that.
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